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Origin of Acai
People native to the Amazon, have long recognized the many Acai Berry benefits, both nutritional and medicinal, and included this fruit in their diet for centuries. They would drink the Acai juice made from pulping the fruit or consume the Acai pulp itself. The berries have long been known by locals to have value in improving the immune system and have even been referred to as the "Amazon Rainforest Viagra" for their energy boosting properties! |
Acai
Berry is the fruit of açaí palm, which belongs to the palm family in the
genus Euterpe cultivated for their fruit and superior hearts of palm.
There are literally hundreds
of species of palm trees that oftentimes dominate the vegetation of regularly
flooded rainforest lands in the Amazon. The Palm family , is one of the most
useful families of plants and widely used by rainforest inhabitants. It contains
32 genera with about 1100 species. Eight species are native to Central and South
America, from Belize southward to Brazil and Peru, growing mainly in swamps and
floodplains. Palms are among the best known and extensively cultivated plant
families. They have been important to humans throughout much of history
providing range of products including food, beverages, cooking oil, clothing,
construction materials, tools, weapons and household wares.
Found
throughout the Amazon, Acai is extremely common throughout the lowland flood
areas along the rivers of northern South America where it forms large groves.
Açaí palms are tall, slender palms growing to 15–30 meters in height, with
Acai
also produces an edible fruit which grows in bunches. Two crops of fruit
are produced each year. Each tree stem usually produces four to eight bunches of
fruit. Each bunch can weigh up to 6 kg and one stem/trunk normally yields, on
average, 24 kgs of fruit annually. The fruit is round, 1 inch (25 mm) in
diameter, with a single large seed about 0.25–0.40 inches (7–10 mm) in diameter
surrounded by stringy fibrous sheaths and a thin oily coating.
The Acai Berry is green at a young age. As the fruit matures it
changes to a deep purple color and is close in size to a blueberry. Each berry
contains only a small amount of the precious and sought after Acai Pulp as the
seeds which is inedible makes up about 80% of the acai
fruit.